20 strategies for learner interactions in mobile #MOOC

Let's be honest, we all LOVE research *grin*, or facts, or lists, or useful practices ... or practical strategies for that matter. Well, here is a new set of useful strategies for mobile MOOCs, I hope you like it!

In my latest research I focused on the impact of mobile access on learner interactions in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The research was done to get my Master in Education at Athabasca University. As always all of the Athabasca faculty was supportive to get the research up to their standards (ethical approval, relevant literature...).

The readable and hopefully useful list of 20 mobile strategies to increase learner interaction in a MOOC that came out of my research can be found below in this post, but feel free to read the full thesis here, it has links to ethical procedures (e.g. informed consent form), some web analytics, community of inquiry use to screen learner interactions.... If you want to reference to the strategies, or parts of the thesis, this is the APA reference for it:

de Waard, I. (2013). Impact of mobile access on learner interactions in a MOOC. Retrieved from Athabasca DThesis database http://hdl.handle.net/10791/23 

Abstract of the research 
As mobile access and massive open online courses (MOOCs) become a global reality, the realm of potential distance learners is expanding rapidly. Mobile learning (mLearning) as well as MOOCs are based on similar characteristics as shown in the literature review of this study. They both enhance a community feeling, increasing networking and collaboration; they strengthen lifelong and informal learning, they use social media to a large extend and they are ideal for setting up communicative dialogues. The focus on learner interactions is of interest, as research has shown that dialogue is an important element for learning and knowledge enhancement, and mobile access increases the opportunities to enter into such interactions. This thesis study used a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach to investigate the impact of mobile accessibility on learner interaction in a MOOC. The study showed that opening up a MOOC for mobile access has immediate impact on learner interactions, as participants with mobile devices tend to interact more with their fellow learners in comparison to their non-mobile colleagues. This was deduced from the mixed methods approach looking at web-based statistics, an online survey, an analysis using the Community of Inquiry framework and one-on-one interviews with volunteers. The study formulated a set of 20 strategies and possible consequences deriving from the analysis of the impact of mobile accessibility in a MOOC and more specifically how this affects learner interactions. These strategies might optimize the impact of mobile access on learner interactions in an informal, open, online course. Future research needs to support the findings, embracing a larger learner population from a more varied background. Overall, this research hopes to add to the body of knowledge strengthening the field of distance education.

List of 20 mobile related strategies to increase learner interactions in MOOCs:

Design
1. Offer a ubiquitous learning environment based on BYOD design and content, making use of existing ubiquitous tools (social media, e-mail…) so people can switch between devices at their own preference.
2. Create a user-friendly, one button centralized access learning environment. This easy access must be linked to a clear course overview to increase transparency, user-friendliness and provide the learner with a structure that s/he can organize for self-regulating learning purposes.
Self-directed learning 
3. Provide self-directed learning strategies to the learners.
4. Enabling immediate access to content material as well as discussion areas adds to time management options and it enables self-regulated learning.
5. Offer synchronous and asynchronous learner activities within a clearly timed course. This provides the necessary freedom for the learner to access, reflect and possibly react on the subject touched at specific moments during the course.
6. Provide a clear timetable of the course, while embedding time for reflection into the course timeline. This suggested flexible, yet cohort move through the course provides an opportunity to nurture reflection time, which is in direct relation to learner interactions.
7. Embed informality in the course to allow increased, autonomous learner interactions to emerge. This room for emergence is induced by the course being both formal and informal, or informal overall and being mobile. The informal character of a course results in participants feeling more at ease with sharing and producing content and engaging in interactions across all their devices.
Digital skills
8. Increase the necessary digital skills of the learner, providing basic training before the course starts via meaningful content-related actions. If a course is accessible for a multitude of devices, it affects (the need for) digital skills, because multiple devices have multiple characteristics and affordances.
Content 
9. Offer an array of course materials, varying from bite size snacks to big, time consuming content. The mobility of the user results in the ability to access materials in a variety of locations and times. As such a wide array of course materials is needed to cater to the time availability of the learner. Offering the learner a choice to tailor the content to their current possibilities.
10. Provide a sense of ownership about the content and the learning: BYOD, contextualized options, this adds to the overall learner motivation.
Human learning environment
11. Ensure a safe learning environment. This essential to increase learner interactions in general. Tolerance, trust, daring to write in a non-native language and knowing that one can pose every content related question and not being judged for either its simplicity or format must be set early in the course.
12. Provide interaction/communication guidelines stipulating balanced communication allowing a safe discussion area to be ensured. By creating a safe learning environment, a broader perspective of personalities are tempted to engage and interact in the course.
13. Profile a central course person(s) (e.g. central coordinator, course support person) who watches over the interactions and links to each participant personally, ensuring a trusting learning environment with room for cultural and language diversity.
14. Watch over the group-size. Community feeling is increased by an intermediate group-size and learner-centered activities, which in turn affects learner interactions.
15. Allow networks to emerge. A community feeling based upon easy (mobile) access increases the formation of a more durable professional network for those connecting to each other in a way that surpasses the course duration.
Course activities
16. Embed icebreaker activities and/or discussions at the beginning of the course to allow learner interactions to take off. These activities should also be linked to intellectual topics.
17. Ensure discussions or conversation starters. The act of conversation and exchanging ideas leads to more interactions as participants become more familiar with each other on professional grounds.
18. Create meaningful, contextualized, generic, topic related interactions, as they are pivotal to create a course community spirit, because the exchange of professional interests adds to the knowledge need of the learners.
19. Add activities involving non-verbal communication to offer additional understanding, which increases the community feeling, for it might offer an additional insight into dialogue and discussion.
20. Ensure topic relevant learner diversity in examples or actions. Learners can more easily join in those conversations where they detect knowledge niches to which they can provide an answer, strengthening each other.

Nota tool for collaborative #mLearning with eBooks

Last week I got a message from Stephanie Ray and she asked me to take a look and review Nota, a free mobile collaborative learning platform which is available in a web format and as a mobile app. As she mentioned that it was linked to Open Educational Resources (OER) of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) textbooks, I got intrigued. They only launched in January 2013 so still beta, which is the nicest state as all of our remarks on the tool are as such welcomed.

After playing around a bit with Nota, it sure seems a nice tool. It offers textbook access with immediate (= internet enabled) links to movies, pictures, annotations... As it does offer very easy annotation options (just click a button), and most of all everything gets fed right into the cloud again. Another nice feature is the fact that Nota keeps a timeline of your actions (really useful if you know you visited something, but not sure where it was located in a particular book). Because annotations are easy to make, you can also link to personal content that is relevant to the topic you are researching (or teaching or learning for that matter) and build upon the original content provided. Really nice and it works smoothly, if you have a strong internet connection. So anyone can easily add comments, bookmarks, put in links to other content like video's, statistics, pictures.... which then can be commented on, liked, shared... all over again. 

At present Nota is focusing on the free STEM catalog of high school and college textbooks, as such Nota is targeting students who can support each other in a peer-to-peer learning environment, without the high cost of textbooks or tutoring. But I can see how this type of technology has the potential to go beyond its original start. A community of practitioners could use the tool to start up their own text and multimedia rich training/learning HUB. Exchanging information and adding to it as they read on. Of course everything is in the open, so everyone could have access.

At the moment the tool is only accessible for Android version 4.0 or higher, or via the web. But they do mention that the Apple versions (cross mobile) will be out soon as well.

The app and web version are still in beta, so everyone is kindly invited to test the application and feed any comments that they have back to the developer team, feel free to look at the bunch of brains behind nota or send your feedback about the app/web tool to info@handstand-inc.com

What would I like to see as an addition: a voice annotation option. Add the audio sensor/microphone from my mobile as a voice-to-speech bit to the options and it will make life easier for me, because I do not like to type much with my smartphone keyboard. Overall a nice addition for mLearning.

A quick look on how it works can be seen here

FutureLearn: pedagogical & mLearning MOOC platform - the approach

For all of you out there wanting to push your government into setting up a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform gathering knowledge from all your national universities, take a look at the approach of UK’s open university on planning a MOOC platform, it looks very promising.

Ever since I was 9 years old I have watched school television on BBC where the Open University UK rolled out wonderfully rich and comprehensible visual content. At age 10 I could understand and speak basic English thanks to them (Dutch being my mother tongue). Now, as in a dream come true I am researching right at the center of that same institution and … even bigger news: they are starting up their own MOOC platform, the so called FutureLearn ! So ok, I am a bit enthusiastic here - read subjective - but after hearing yesterday’s introduction focusing on the pedagogical and design plans of the FutureLearn MOOC platform from Mr UK-MOOC himself – Mike Sharples – I gladly list why I think FutureLearn starts with an advantage and could become a strong contender to the already existing xMOOC platforms out there (EDx, Udacity, Coursera...). 

Strong pedagogy and ubiquitous design at its core

• Start from ubiquity, mobile design: we live in a mobile age, immigration, brain drain, brain movement, hopping between cities, moving to where the work is … an increasing amount of people are becoming citizens of the world. This mobility is enabled in part by telecommunications, more specifically mobile devices. And all of us are using mobile devices more frequently each day. This is a global movement, as many developing regions are also mainly accessing web content through mobiles. As such, building a platform starting from mobile ubiquity is – to me – the right thing to do. Forget mobile enabled, bring mobile learning at the core of the design, as well as content and learner activity and this will result in more course engagement (more on that tomorrow, will share some of my research on that topic).
• Built pedagogy linked to mobility and social media: offer small content snippets, provide short courses as well as longer courses, build a narrative to anchor the content that is offered and the learning actions that are demanded from the participants for higher retention, …
• Engaging the learner for their needs: as many of us are lifelong learners, engaging in learning that fits our knowledge needs is important (and time saving), this is also taken into account in the new platform: short courses (6 – 8 weeks, but can vary), progressive rewards (informal and formal).
• Put an institute with online pedagogy experience right at the core of the set-up and planning. The only people really knowing what online learning is about, are the open universities world wide. They are best equipped to set up MOOCs using proven practices for online courses. And yes, MOOCs are different from traditional online courses, but they have similarities. And the Open University of the UK is right at the center of FutureLearn. They understand Open Educational Resources, online dynamics, getting learners accustomed with online learning... for them the transition of getting online courses to a qualitative strong MOOC level is within reach.
• Build in rapid iteration options, so the platform can be optimized as research and consequent analysis provides  new insights 

Challenges faced by starting a (national) MOOC platform:

• Access to relevant research and information sources (sometimes good research papers and information are only accessible through payment)
• High quality course content: e.g. rich multimedia, preferably accessible to all
• Solving online best practices learning problems
• Ubiquitous platform: users will use their own devices (UYOD comes to mind)
• And most importantly (in my view): a platform that meets the learning needs of the participants as mentioned above: tailored, guiding learners through chaos that comes along with MOOCs, multiple devices with which learners will access it…) which inevitably leads to contemporary sound pedagogy.

So how does FutureLearn seem to tackle these challenges (remember, I only took notes during the presentation of the platform, so I could be wrong at some point due to my speedy note taking)?

Using the strengths that already exist – partnering up

The UK has some strong elements for setting up a MOOC (but then all of us have, it is their approach which is usable!):

• A high quality multimedia production house (BBC). Just think about the awesome documentaries! (National Geographic also comes to mind when looking at great visuals)
• A high profile national library: the British Library just teamed up with FutureLearn, enabling course participants to have access to resources (not sure to what extent, this access can be guaranteed taking into account copyright/costs and such, but … they are partners so the best possible options become possible)
• Bringing together strong partners: FutureLearn says to partner up with top UK universities (looking at the 30 most highly rated universities – not sure how this works in practice). Strong partners means, proven qualitative content and teaching approaches (admittedly old school teaching). 
• Linking traditional university learning with online learning: this is where the combination of Open University with UK universities comes in. 

So FutureLearn is rolling out the big guns, building a platform which is embedding educational tools and formats enriching todays educational reality.

On the critical side

All of the above is great in theory, and I really belief the approach starting from a strong, contemporary pedagogy is the only way to have a sound base for any learning platform, but … turning this into practice can proof to be quite challenge. For it means that all stakeholders involved must be willing to go through the change. And change management as we all know is the toughest human nut to crack. So will it work? Will the platform be as innovative as planned? Will participants be willing to reinvent their learning? Will the facilitators of these courses be willing to put themselves in the new teacher roles as guides on the side? We will see, but as to date, FutureLearn is said to roll out its first open courses in September 2013, having gone through beta testing by then, so … let’s wait and see!

MOOC completion and drop-out rates

Yesterday Katy Jordan casually send me her blog (Katy is a fellow PhD'r sitting only 7 feet away from me!). It turned out she is working (in her spare time!) on the completion rates in MOOCs. Looking at xMOOCs by Coursera, EdX mainly, and one course by Udacity and MITx.
Katy is clearly an upcoming academic, she is thorough, focused, analytical ... everything you need to make it in the academic world. AND she is now focusing on MOOC, the completion rates in combination with the assessment types. The nice thing is, she shares her findings live, so a true open scientist. Take a look at her analytics at her MOOC project site here.

More openness will increase development in the spirit of MOOC
One of the tough things she is facing is getting the data opened up for her. Getting her hands on learning analytics is not always that easy. There are many reasons for this (she researches for non-US institute, while looking at US xMOOCs so outside the universities providing the courses, privacy issues, platform difficulties, ...).
While MOOCs (cMOOCs in particular) came from the open education movement, and with all MOOCs spreading the word that every student, no matter were should be able to follow a MOOC, one would hope true openness of data would be possible. But, there are technical issues only being realized right now, and there is of course a market were business models that still needs to be fine-tuned (if not set up), and best practices need to be created,... tough barriers for emerging (international) research fields. A cross-continental research project would be wonderful, a bit like CERN and the Large Hydran Collidor, universities from the world collaborating for the good of all!

One of the main MOOC challenges: MOOC drop-out
As drop-out rates are one of the main MOOC challenges, this research is a gift. For insight in the drop-out rates can provide angles for improvement, increased retention ... So, looking forward to follow Katy's research. And have a look at the wonderful set of papers she has written, including using semantic web technologies... inspiring stuff!

To me, I feel that MOOCs are also a way to improve expert learning, so not necessarily linked to assessments and such. It is more about lifelong learning, getting information to enhance personal knowledge for professional reasons. But that ... is another research all together. For at that point, you cannot look at assessments to indicate completion. For the expert MOOCs might have lurkers (= people that do not actively engage in MOOC interactions, but do follow what is going on) that actually have found what they were looking for, learning without interacting, and those lurkers would be part of the learners finishing the course (but how to analyse that?!). 

#MOOCs change education, but jobs decline in a knowledge era

Jay Cross got me onto the Ted video where Daphne Koller (co-founder of Coursera) speaks about the benefits of MOOCs. And yes, great MOOCs follow the best practices of great online learning: active learning, authentic learning, peer-to-peer interactions, peer grading... and Daphne puts everything out there very clear and with research based evidence + MOOC stat examples. I love MOOCs, I organized two on mobile learning in 2011 and 2012 - the so called MobiMOOC, because I am a firm believer in both education and online, lifelong learning, as well as technology. So inevitably MOOCs have been and are to me a benefit (and please all the discussions on pro and cons only remind me of similar discussions when school television came out, or the internet even... at the beginning it is always the utopians versus the sceptics, but in the end ... the technology is simply adopted because it allows new things to happen).

BUT ... there are a few inconsistencies resulting from MOOCs on the promises they seem to provide and were I get stuck. Feel free to give me any possible answer.

To provide jobs from MOOC graduates, society has to change
There are simply things, like access to technology. Yes, MOOCs can reach everyone ... if they are literate in the language of the MOOC and if they have the infrastructure and instruments (= technology, electricity) and time needed. As such people in dire straights will still be in a tough position to even follow a MOOC. But even ignoring this group (for this discussion), there is a potential hick-up that can affect all of us, if society is not changed towards another working model.

Most of us in the Web sphere are convinced of the fact that the industrial revolution is behind us, and the knowledge revolution is here. And there are discussions taking place in different fields on how the internet changes everything due to all of the indirect and direct impact it has on all of our lives. So lifelong learning is put into place as a goal (personal responsibility for learning, and linking learning to the promise of success), and knowledge deepening is a goal set forth for all of us. But with knowledge comes the capacity to automate or - with similar effect but in the other option - the realization of increasing profit margins by getting cheaper labor. This means less jobs are needed due to knowledge aiming at the societal model of today.

The university graduate and MOOC dilemma 
So in a way, the focus of education of today is actually something we (the world) needs less of ... in quantity. Even if all of us MOOC'rs finish the courses, get accredited (if the course offers it) ... even then, there is not enough work for all of us.
Success stories emerge from MOOCs, with witnesses indicating how following MOOCs has changed their professional and personal lives (which is true and it makes me enthusiastic)... but this is only a temporary Utopia if we do not change the world towards where we want it to be. And I hope we want the world to head where Daphne was pointing at: getting education to all, and a better life for all of us in all regions.

The simple truth is that not all of us get jobs even when graduating from universities, and if MOOCs add to that particular degree market (universities), we are stuck, for indeed if even the one's that graduate now are not always finding jobs, with the declining job market in mind, most of the new wave of graduates will get stuck as well. A knowledge era is a fine thing, it sounds great ... for a minority of people. So how do we (re)find a balance between jobs and people having them?

Any ideas are welcomed, and if you want to hear more about MOOCs, feel free to join Jay's hangout on February 27, 9:30 am Pacific time on MOOCs with many of the MOOC actors. 

Or watch the wonderful video talk of Daphne Koller below (20 minutes):

#ict4D: the complex mLearning challenges for specific ethnic groups #mlw2013

Leslie Dodson from the University of Colorado on The mobile utitly gap and literacy challenges in oral-language communities: sms use by Berber women.

These are my live blognotes coming from UNESCO's mobile learning week enriched with tweets from Ronda (@glam_mobileleo).
Leslie used an epigraphic research approach and working in the field for 8 to 9 months.

For those interested in the number of challenges that can be encountered when diving into a mLearning project with very specific target learners... this is it!

Pressing issues
conventional wisdom assumes

• women with mobile phones can text
• illiterate women and numeration
• mobiles obscure gender

this is not the case

• many women are only able to use expensive voice services
• functions that rely on counting or nubmer sequences are confusing
• cultural restrictions on communication between men and women extend to mobiles

These issues are bigger than a community of Berber women (approx. 500 billion women are illiterate)

Population: women and work

• Berber communities: tribal, traditional, Muslim, conservative, rural, arid and poor.
• Women lack formal education
• women's livelihoods are tied to the Argan tree (oil production, or as a home lifelyhood). 

Unseco has designated Morocco's Argan forests.

The technology

• simple, broken, secndhand, counterfeit phones
• few smart phones
• relatively broad network coverage and available power

the goal of the project

• expand the use f available mobile phones for personal and instrubmental communicatoin
• explore the challenges of moving from oral communication (speaking and calling) to texting in a non-text based community
• avoid a  formal educational approach because of shame and fear

A complex language environment
2 spoken dialects
Darija: an amagamation of Arabic, French and Spanish words
Tachelhit: one of numerous Berber dialect

2 official written and spoken languages
Modern Standard Arabic and French

3 alphabets: Arabic, Latin script, Tifinagh script (Glyph-based, not widely used).

The texting utility gap
due to the complex literacy and language environment, women's mobile use is basic ("What is literacy when u have 2 spoken dialects?")
they are unable to benefit fro many phone features ("My phone only speaks #French but I dont speak French.")
they face socio-cultural and psycho-dynamic deterrents to learning
illiterate women are paying a tech tax because they cannot text
they are forgoing service benefits

• unable to take advantage of mobile bonuses
• cannot access development initiatives
• missing out on training opportunities

coping strategies: high visual literacy

• many users identify words and numbers as visual packets of information (Berber women in #Morocco use small pieces of paper to identify words/numbers on phones)
• they rely on pattern recognition to identify phone numbers
• they memorize keypad sequences
• they use paper to assist in phone use
• they identify contacts with icons, names and numbers
• they rely on scribes

personal communication: mobile support for literacy in the Coop

• informal education
• situated learning
• adult women get to choose the literacy they want
• highly motivated to learn latin alphabet
• the mobile provides the alphabet at their fingertips
• multimedia use ("Multimedia includes chalkboards, alongside other tools we use..." )

If you do not have common devices, it can be very hard to collaboratively learn. There was a lot of struggle with directions to enter letters, some mobiles have capital and small letters which felt like different alphabets to the women.

Get off your butt & create real #mLearning solutions #mlw2013

As this day progresses, I was blown of my chair by the passionate drive of Theo van Rensburg Lindzter from the Learning Academy Worldwide on the subject of Millennials as mobile educators: innovative youth workforce development solutions.

Theo is a driven, engaging, outspoken speaker.
He made a REAL point! Here are my live blogging notes and be sure to contact Theo if you really want to engage in a mLearning build solution.

In South Africa they realized that there is a real goldmine in young people ready to teach and support other youngsters.

you do not train people, you develop people
We need to finance and solve real problems, and restoring the impact that young people can make.
Millenials can be unemployed, non-actives, nags... BUT these young people can be activated, they want to be activated, mobilizing them to be actively involved.

But the problem into meaningfulness or what we see as work, is an unmarked field of landmines. 
That all part of getting into work and meaningfulness is difficult. So how do you know that you are extending the field of landmines? You promise work in a world that is changes. So we cannot create work like we used to create it. When corporates delete jobs, many of them vanish and are not even replaced.
So how can you counter the loss of meaning. There is nothing meaningful in work that is repetitive. there is a difference between meaningful work and drudgery. So if we talk about mobile educators, we are not talking about drudgery.

He shares that he was doubting why he was out here, paid for its own to come to UNESCO mLearning week.... there are too many mLearning adds, not enough pragmatic foci and outcomes that really change the world.
What needs to be changed: solve problems:
source youth assets - m-ubuntu,
source innovative solutions - sonlig (buying solar chargers to solve basic electricity challenges).

Instill meaning:
serve to imporove student performance
serve and sharpen skills

restore dignity
build networks of collaborations
prepare for new study-service or work opportunities

The students are hungry, they do not have future options, teachers do not have the necessary support they need.
Students are no problems, they initiate something when coming to class. But we must use it for real change.

so what next: lets focus on funding solutions, not projects
campaign for meaning, not just scale and impact
prioritize collaboration and partnership (make students aware of the fact that they are part of a community, of the global world).

And here is an interview with Theo (from a couple of years ago, but giving of m-ubuntu as it was running up for roll-out)

unesco: opportunities, threats & challenges of #mLearning #mlw2013

At the second day of the UNESCO's mLearning week, where Agnes Kukulska-Hulme from the Open University in the UK started the day with a very enlightening presentation bringing together the latest on mLearning pedagogies and focusing on a gender related project.

Title of her presentation is: Aligning migration with mobility: female immigrants using smart technologies for informal learning show the way

What follows are my live blogging notes, based on the slides shared by Agnes.
But I do change the order, starting with the concluding remarks, for I think these are very relevant and as such, reading them first is a good thing. And I will try and get hold of the slides and add a link when possible.

smart city learning

• new configurations of human mobile assistance: friends, volunteers, mentors, online community
• cognitive challenge: challenge arising from ubiquitous interactions: multiple devices, points of interest, augmented reality (how will people cope with that much information coming at them)
• informal content and curricula: curricula built up from discovery of learner requirements (what do the learners need, that can then be translated into more formal curricula: enriching them or changing them completely?).

implications of mLearning

• teacher roles: need to evolve to encompass wide-ranging support for informal learning (teachers must get more experience with mobile learning)
• strong guidance on aspects of personal safety and security issues (trust, safe learning environment, what does it mean for female immigrants to dive into social media networks...)
• review of language and communications curricula - taking account of opportunities for mobile-supported, situated, social learning.
• new measures of learner progress and achievement (learner progress and achievement, how can we capture and measure this, what are new ways to award these achievements? Which formal and informal ways are there, badges, certificates, credits for learning overall ... bridging the gap between formal and informal learning) 

Mobile pedagogy breakthroughs (keypoints)

• flexible collaboration
• faster feedback (not necessarily based on tutor feedback)
• social or study support at point of need
• expended space for reflection and self-monitoring 
• context inspired authentic content and challenge
• location-based discoveries and memories
• connecting learning across settings (contexts)
• caters to learenr diversity
• a route to learner autonomy
• continuity across the life span
• friends and family drawn into learning

Threats to mobile pedagogy as a force for good

• disruption in classrooms and family life
• health hazards: physical, mental, social
• personal safety concerns
• issues of data privacy: data security, trust
• inadequate infrastructures, lack of support, high costs
• perpetates some inequalities
• subject to inpredicateble commercial forces
• increasingly sophisticated technology
• may trivialize or debase education
• confusion around who is guiding learners. As we move into more informal territory, and other people come into play supporting the learner, there is more confusion about who is guiding the learners. 

There are many paradoxes about new learning: mobile yet situated, individual yet social
some examples are shared: lingobee, milexicon, toponimo
In these application the individual and the social happen in a shared space.

At the same time these paradoxes push our thinking, we start really thinking more deeply about how learning is taking place, how it is changing. 
Agnes thinks we are at a cusp of a mobile language learning revolution: a lens on the world, a way to connect with others, immediate translation options...
it makes it easier to engage with the world and specifically those who live in it.

So what are the typical situations that learners find themselves in? So we need to tailor and look at specific situations. 

• The ability to study how learners are using their mobiles for learning, results in studies with learners, surveying how they use mobile devices for language learning. 
• Looking at the use of mobile devices by immigrants coming from Afghanistan. The immigrant population is making use of their mobile devices in specific ways than the general population: playing games, recording videos and photo's, using mobile banking, posting to social media ... so an overall lively use of mobile devices. This can be used in future mobile learning designs. 

Mobile pedagogy: achievements and challenges
MASELTOV project - information servics, incidental languagel earning, community building
smart city learning in the 'ubiquity era'

Maseltov project is a European FP7 project, at this point in time results are starting to come out. The idea of the project is to understand how new mobile technologies can be used for furthering social inclusion.

MASELTOV project looks at smartphones with access to a range of tools tailored to their needs, including language apps.
The target user groups are people that come into the EU from outside the EU, low education (less 8 years of scholing), speakers of Turkish, Arabic and Spanish.
Looking at the complete learning journey: when they connect, how they travel through the city, looking at when they share information or learn...

Different social networks are put into place and screened for their usability in terms of mobile learning:
mobile Q/A forum
geo-social radar: which will detect who is nearby and is willing and able to help you
busuu online community: informal language learning community, and get feedback on your learning and progress.

The short abstract of the project is shared on the UNESCO website: The specific needs of migrant people, along with those of mobile workers and students, call into question the appropriateness of educational provision which is largely centred on classroom-based teaching and learning.  Mobile technologies extend collective knowledge building across formal and informal settings and new models of learning have to be elaborated; however, these bring their own challenges in terms of learner preparedness, available infrastructures, systems of assessment and the changing role of teachers. Furthermore, increasingly smart technologies that can monitor activity patterns and behaviours, and imbue familiar surrounding objects with additional layers of data and meanings, set new cognitive and intellectual challenges. The European MASELTOV research project, which is developing smartphone-based community services for EU immigrants, and in particular for isolated women, is an early example of the next generation of mobile learning, which will combine context-aware technologies with social networks, situated and incidental learning, progress monitoring, and distributed learner support. This research brings to the fore issues of literacy, quality, cost, privacy and trust. Although mobile devices clearly support various forms of mobility, there is more work to be done to ensure that human migration and device-enabled mobility are suitably aligned.

#mlw2013 m4d report on Global Mobile on the Move

While attending UNESCO's mobile learning week in Paris, I will disseminate some of the information that comes up and might be off use. One of the publications linking to mobiles for development are two publications mentioned by Martine Koopman of IICD: Mobile on the Move and a publication focusing on a step-by-step ICT for social innovation publication.

The Mobile on the Move one shares some mobile projects from around the world, it is a short 12 page publication ranging from teacher-to-student projects to increasing farmer income via sms. The report can be downloaded for free here.
The step-by-step publication focuses on how to get a project going, embedding all the stakeholders and built upon regional needs. A nice, brief overview. That publication can be found here.

UNESCO presentation why a MOOC should be mobile #mooc #mlw2013

MOOCs are getting everyone excited. While most of the discussions focus on the impact of MOOCs on Higher Education, the focus of the presentation below will be on the effect of mobile accessibility on learner interactions, as well as overall description of the MobiMOOC case (a MOOC course on mobile learning).

The presentation will be shown and discussed during the upcoming UNESCO mobile learning week in Paris, France and a short description of the presentation can be found here. The mLearning week will get a lot of good people together to analyse mobile learning across the globe and see where we can be heading to ensure education for all (or at least increase educational access). If you want to follow what is happening during the mLearning week, you can also follow the #mlw2013 hashtag.

There will also be some online webinars that are open to all, so if you cannot make it to Paris, make sure you log on to the webinars (look at the right menubar once the link of the webinar opens for more information).

MobiMOOC Unesco mlearning week 2013 from Inge Ignatia de Waard